Rosie O’Donnell is a toilet-tongued, temper-tantrum-tossing tyrant whose ego led to the destruction of her Rosie magazine, a lawyer for her former publisher said yesterday.

In opening statements for a multimillion dollar breach-of-contract case between magazine bigs Gruner + Jahr USA and O’Donnell, G + J lawyer Martin Hyman said the former talk-show host turned her back on the magazine when the publishers refused her directions to make it “edgy.”

“She’s addicted to getting her own way,” Hyman said, but some of her suggestions were too bizarre to take.

“She wanted to put Mike Tyson, a convicted rapist, on the cover of this women’s magazine,” Hyman complained.

Finding herself on the losing end of a power struggle with Editor in Chief Susan Toepfer, “Miss O’Donnell walked away,” Hyman said, “causing the loss of 100 jobs and tens of millions of dollars for Gruner + Jahr.”

O’Donnell lawyer Lorna Schofield told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ira Gammerman that it was G + J that turned its back on her client, shutting her out of having any control over the magazine that bore her name in a bid to make it more “tabloidy.”

“G + J wanted it both ways. They wanted her name and face, but not” her input, Schofield said, noting that the so-called “Queen of Nice” can get mad.

“She’s not Mother Teresa,” Schofield said. “She did not grow up in a fancy household. She’s loud and has a temper and is opinionated.”

She’s also completely upfront, Schofield said. “What you see is what you get,” she said.

She added that the mother of four whom Hyman painted as so uncaring gave all editorial staffers $10,000 checks when the magazine folded.

The magazine launched in early 2001, and Hyman said it was supposed to be an extension of her popular TV talk show – “warm, friendly” and “empowering women” while featuring “her celebrity friends” – but that O’Donnell started to change in May 2002 after quitting her show and meeting musician Boy George in London.

O’Donnell told Boy George she wanted to bring the show he was appearing in there, “Taboo,” to Broadway, but he refused, Hyman said, telling her “she was too suburban. She returns determined to prove him wrong.”

That was about the time she declared she would be “an uber-bitch” like rivals Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey, Hyman quoted her as saying.

That showed on Toepfer’s third day on the job, when O’Donnell called in a rage over a picture the new editor selected for the magazine’s cover featuring the star with two “Sopranos” cast members.